Estamos procurando desenvolvedores brasileiros que estejam firmes nessa primeira madrugada!

Aqueles que quiserem o troph Brazilian Developer é só comentar aqui em baixo.

Boa LD a todos!

Tags: Troph

The last couple of times, I agonized a lot about the idea. This time the idea came to me in the shower just after getting up, and it’s unusually unterrible!

In my extreme originality, it will be a maritime themed puzzle game where I think the scope should be managable.

Here’s a quick mockup of the mood I’m going for.

The cannon is inspired in BTD, one of my favorite games , I think it’s too much similar, maybe I’ll make another one.
What are you thinking about the graphics, Is it good ?

Art’s definitely not my strong suit, but at least I’ve got something to work with now. I’m going to sleep now, until tomorrow!

4 hours in and I’m still brainstorming. AUGH this is tough! Maybe if I elaborate on the ideas I have so far something will click. Here goes.

———————–

Idea 1: Eating competition game

THEME?
-eat as fast as you can while keeping your food “Beneath the Surface” (don’t vomit / choke)

GAMEPLAY?
-reflex game: press key sequences/patterns to perform actions
-multitasking game: must perform several independent tasks at once: grab food+chew+swallow, digest, stretch(?), drink water ask for refills (2 categories: food & water), manage pulse/stress level(?), burp (without choking, don’t interrupt eating!), hiccups!!
-DANGER EVENTS: about to choke (quickly get some water, manage breath/pulse), about to throw up (mash key or something?)
-time limit: eat x foods in y seconds; once checkpoint reached, higher x and smaller y
-manage stomach fullness: counter with stretches (expand stomach, but takes time) or water (increases digestion speed but increases hiccup %, and bloats(?))

PROS?
-easy to make: no character movement, collision, or level design
-longevity: randomly-generated events (no levels either) so it can be played for a long time, high score rush!
-theme is different enough? maybe too much?
-modular: should be easy to add more features & events if i have time

CONS?
-theme is risky…should emphasize “beneath” and “surface”, perhaps visually (stomach meter with a bar on top, or something)
-repetitiveness: gameplay could fall into a pattern (=infinite score) if there aren’t enough events for the player to manage…gotta keep it fresh
-artwork: it needs it! can people tolerate my bad art? probably
-can i use flashpunk for this…? was expecting to be able to use an easy framework, don’t feel like using pure AS3 + Flash IDE

———————–

Idea 2: Climb & Dive

THEME?
-have to climb a level within a time limit; jump from as high as possible to fall hard enough to break through the planet’s crust and escape to “Beneath the Surface”
-in a drill suit / ship or something, that can be deployed when you make the final jump
-space colony planet, want to breach into the core where it’s cold because the planet is getting to close to a sun (malfunction)

GAMEPLAY?
-vertical platformer: run & jump over obstacles, climb ladders, falling platforms (wide enough screen for big level, not just up)
-calamity: dodge falling objects, crumbling platforms
-maybe no enemies/HP: single-hit deaths
-maybe just one level, but going for high score: how high you can get before jumping, how far you can dig into the ground when landing, SUPER BONUS/Win if you manage to break through the crust!
-2 parts to gameplay: part 1 is vertical climbing, part 2 after the final jump, falling to the ground while dodging things (getting hit slows you down)

PROS?
-cool
-can have fun with level design
-coding/building a level should be easy with Ogmo & Flashpunk

CONS?
-sounds tough…and if development falls apart there won’t be much to make it fun
-need an elaborate level to make it fun, and won’t have much replayability
-really don’t want to make a random level generator if making 1 level isn’t enough

———————–

Idea 3: Climb a Sinking Level

THEME?
-towers/spires are sinking “Beneath the Surface” of the ocean, or perhaps a volcano
-ancient ruins setting? you’re a native trying to find high ground

GAMEPLAY?
-narrow vertical platforming, with bursts of horizontal: climb a tower as it sinks, but once you’re near the top you have to jump to a tower beside you (this will only work if the adjacent tower only gets platforms once it has sunk for a while, so you won’t just jump to it right away)
-crumbling floors, spikes, hazards. can probably have health in this game, but falling off tower kills you
-some events trigger only once the tower has sunken a bit, so even if you can climb faster than it sinks, there’s still a challenge

PROS?
-sounds fun, should be simple & safe enough to be fun

CONS?
-how long with the game last without randomly-generated levels? Hand-designed ones probably don’t suit this game very well, since the player should have to “keep going”

———————–

Idea 4: Double-sided puzzle platformer

THEME?
-controlling two players: one on each side of the ground (above & below), so one is “Beneath the Surface”
-spirit world? dream world? main character is “real/true” one, and the below one is the “fake/shadowy” one (can work out specifics later, but it’s flexible)

GAMEPLAY?
-top character falls down (normal), beneath character falls up: control both at the same time. Right/left moves them in tandem, jump button makes them jump perpendicular to their floors (top up, beneath down)
-different level obstacles on each side of every level: walls, spikes, lasers, LOCKED DOORS & KEYS ON DIFFERENT SIDES. Key for a door will be on the opposide side of the level, so one char grabs key & other char goes through door! okay.
-“bottomless pit” = gap in ground where both chars can fall through; lose life when they hit each other
-multiple levels, puzzle-style: have to get both characters to the exit at the same time

PROS?
-easy & fast to make with Flashpunk & Ogmo
-inoffensive concept, will probably be enjoyable enough even if levels aren’t spectacular
-can skimp on the artwork until later on
-core engine should be quick to develop, allowing more time for level design (which is important)

CONS?
-level design: might be hard to make levels with hard puzzles
-a bit too boring/safe

Okay, that was helpful. #2 & 3 are probably too complex to tackle or won’t be fun enough in time. I like the concept of #1 the most, and will hopefully be simple enough to make, as long as I’m okay with making a non-level-based game like I’m used to. I like #4 too but it might be too simple, however it can definitely be an option to fall back on if whatever else I choose to do goes belly up.

4 hours in, after wrestling with a small platform bug, managed to get interactive crossword solving online, along with a basic asset…

Now I need to flesh out the rest of the game, which will be something like a text adventure with a crossword solving mechanic. Especially worried about writing the narrative…

As usual, I’m just making it up as I go along.

Still no idea what the game is, but general idea is: You’re a laser firing from a planet’s orbit down to the surface, burning away chunks of the layers, cutting deeper down. I’m not sure why…..

… and I still cant figure out how to embed stuff properly here, if it looks squished, it shouldn’t be!

We are building everything up.
Our “we are in posts” needs some more time. Currently 2/7 at our place. 3 are late by >30 min. Good start 😀

Tags: desk photo, workplace

So after some time brainstorming I got some ideas that I will explore a little further before settling on a final one.

I have one that I like to share. It’s about making a sort of nonogram game where you get different cubes or other rectangular 3D shape made of voxels/little cubes that you have to carve out to find the shape beneath the surface. Instead of going with numbers on each voxel I will instead try to show only the silhouette of the shape seen from front, side and top like in a 3d modeling program. The player will have to carve out and aproximate as good as possible the object.

I will be using shades of gray to show the “deepness” of the shape. Meaning when seen from a side, if there are more than one voxel in the silhouette that square would appear darker. So far I like this a lot, because it is very good at enhancing/improving spacial awareness.

Ok 2 hours in and progress is waaay slower than expected. Libraries set up, playlists playing, but all I’ve got in the game is the player moving around, a blur effect and a bit of art. Oh dear.

Also, I must remember to sit properly. Don’t forget your back kids!

Playlist for the next hour:

Converge. I need something to kick me into gear.

After about 5 hours of work I have somewhat of an engine done. I got my sprites, sprite sheets, tiles, tile maps, ticks, renders, all that fun stuff under control.

The idea of the game is fairly simple and is based around controlling a colony of ants. You start off with a group of couple of ants and your goal is to breed and feed them to grow and expand the nest. I plan on doing random events like a human trying to destroy it (so you need to hide the queen deep), resources underground, random predator attacks and whatever else I have the time for.

Currently I’m going to bad with the thought of waking up in 4 hours to take a practice AP Chem exam (people living in US know how much pain that is …).

Anyways, here’s my really short time elapse of tonight:

Took a bit longer to get base engine running but I have a good base now that is working well.

So now I have the basics, some tiles on the screen and a player.

I do have a bug in my input manager for gamepads I have to figure out next, but at least keyboard is working correctly.

Mainly cuz I’ve been spending the last couple of hours trying to get Phaser to do simple things like reading tilemaps and so forth.

Why do I insist in doing LD in a new framework every time I start? Just imagine all the things I could accomplish if I wasn’t so dumb. <_>

Link to watching me suffer: https://github.com/johnfn/ld29

So this is Gravedigger on its VERY early stages.

After all it will be a platformer, heh.

I have already planned the main features of it, and have basic platforming working, along with the most basic animations, so now it’s about working on those features, and making some level design. I need to plan ahead what kinds of things will populate the world, to have a better understanding of how much time I can spend on each thing.

So here is my course of action. I’ll be finishing the main character’s main feature. After that, I’ll go and get some sleep, I’m pretty tired right now, this day wasn’t specially an easy one. While I get some sleep, I’ll do some paper work (?), level sketches and a list of objectives. Then, my secret technique. Sleep Talk. Sleeping is the best weapon against mind disorganization.

Another update tomorrow. Sketches, or something.

Alright, I’m in. Took me a while to make up my mind, but I’ve got an idea for the theme I like.

You have to fly a helicopter and poach fish at the same time. Don’t worry it will make sense.

Tools:

– Love2D
– Sublimetext
– sfxr
– Whatever painting programs I can find

I’m way behind already, but whatever 😀

So I got my project set up going drawn some artwork (very horrible, to be refined) got a camera in there and lots of house keeping code!

Continuing work tmmrw!

I’m making a simulation game.

Starting to get somewhere …

It began!!!!

Luckily i had a rather boozy night yesterday but hey, it’s the only theme chosen i got an idea for i really digg!!! Not to bad…

All i got at the moment is a pretty concret version in my head and a pretty rough concept on the table; so what could possibly go wrong…

Most scary thing for me are the graphics. I’m a rather fullblood programmer used to collage styles a little bit but never worked without existing assets before :/

What i’m really looking forward is, how i’ll manage to come up with some fitting music using my bass and looper:

And now to another fun part: verlet integration Yaaaay!!!

Have fun everybody!!!

Our team has settled on an idea. We’re combining two versions of the “beneath the surface” theme: Beneath the surface of the skin, and beneath the surface of the mind.

You are a robotic tick with a rudimentary AI, which is based on a neural net made up of DNA molecules. To grow your neural net, you must suck up blood to collect more DNA.

The twist: Your tick is talking to you while you do this. We hope to implement a text-to-speech engine to go along with this, as the results could be hilarious.

At a low level of intelligence, your tick just wails out long lines of random vowels. Eventually, random syllables. Random words. Random sentences.

Besides just blood, you can also stumble upon pre-existing ideas and emotions, which affect the word bank you develop; basically, the difference between your AI saying “shit” instead of “poopy.”

Should be interesting. And hilarious.

Gameplay is top-down isometric as you look for sweet spots and avoid obstacles that can slow you down or kill you, like ingrown hairs and other parasites. Spending too long feeding in one area? Heeeeere comes the lighter…

I’m currently tackling gameplay, Patrick is covering the speech/syntax engine (he’s already got it generating some speech. The first phrase generated? “Uhhh, love kitten.”)

Cindy’s starting on artwork while Chris brainstorms more game mechanics.

Work has begun. Stay tuned! 😀

the direct link goes to the gif not sure why it’s not animating in the post

So far, I’ve managed to finish:

• main character animations
• lighting
• movement
• particle effect
• tilemap background
• basic story outline

Here’s a screen show of the very ugly prototype.

From now, I’m going to work more on things like:

• fleshing out the story
• putting the story into the game
• thinking of a name
• making it look pretty
• making it fun

I’d say this will end up being less than 15 minutes long, but hopefully it will be very tidy.

This is my first Ludum Dare, so naturally I’m super excited to work on my project. Unfortunately, I’ve been running into some really dumb speed bumps. It seems that unity has no support for tile mapping out of the box, which is something I probably should have looked into. Instead of buying a solution from the asset store I’ve decided to use the tiled editor to make my world, and then export it as an image. So far this seems to be working well but is not ideal. However, I think I’ve already spent too much time on this aspect of the game.

Hopefully development picks up from here on out. Also here is a quick snapshot of where I’m at, in all its terrible programmer art glory. That is a chipmunk and a peanut, standing in a field of grass.

Finally got the canvas drawing sorted out. The game is set on a small moon or asteroid and is based on polar coordinates to minimize unnecessary calculations. It might get difficult to manage extra sprites and assets once they are added, but it’s working well so far!

The player’s rover has a drill to drill for resources:

But obstacles and hazards might have to be cleared out of the way first with the shockwave!

The placeholder graphics aren’t great, but they get the point across.

Ten hours in, and the game’s about half done.

The name is ‘Beneath the Surface’ (I know. Really creative). It’s a very short game about a father trapped underground in a coffin. It’s also very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Premature Burial’. I’m aiming for a really surreal atmosphere, where players kept perpetually tense. Hopefully I could finish this game tomorrow afternoon.

So the theme that we decided on is similar to the myth of Scylla + Charybdis, with a bit of Siren thrown in.  You swim around the ocean trying to lure sailors to their deaths, by singing to them to placate them, then grabbing them and pulling them in.  You have to avoid getting hit by cannonballs that they fire at you, as well as managing your health and breath (which you spend to sing and swim underwater).

I’m making some good progress so far.  The tech demo thus far allows you to swim around and leap out of the water in a really satisfying way, and models your breath meter correctly.  The next thing is to work on is generating boats with cannons and sailors attached.

This is my second ludum dare – the first one was really fun for me. This time around I am alone and will try to enter the competition. I will be using PlayCanvas. My twitter handle is @vkalpias.

Good luck everybody!

Here’s my base code. Just about to dive into coding, and I hadn’t decided what programming language I was going to use until now. BSD license, about 1.6k lines of C++ with SDL and OpenGL.

http://moria.us/ludumdare/ld29/ldbase.tar.gz

Hopefully I’ll get to work on this more before the deadline, I think there’s a game in there somewhere 😛 YouTube vid with GAMEPLAY HERE

Hours Passed: 5

Local Time: 10:54PM

Fatigue Level: 5%

Art/Code Completed: 10% / 5%

Just spent the last 4 hours or so working on the art style. Minimal coding so far except a basic project setup and Animation class.

My strategy right now is to keep the complexity to a minimal. No need for much collision for this game except floor and roof. More could be added at the end.

Right now I’m just trying to decide whether to keep working until I drop or go to bed…

Concept- “Metro Lancer”

Your mission to blow up enemy positions from the underground metro system. Your equipment allows you to ride the tracks, as well as detach any time to fight mid-air.

Fight through the enemy underground defenses to get beneath their aboveground positions!

Concept art so far:

Tags: chickens are awesome, Long live the holy chicken

I’ve decided on an idea.

It’s called Subcutaneous Explorer and it will be related to exploring things inside the human body. It may include combat.

Since I have mastered the art of pushing buttons in Github (I always had a lot of trouble with git), I’ll be placing the code here:

https://github.com/trollkatt/SubcutaneousExplorer

Wow, for the first two hours I was really sweating this theme.  I blame the pre-thinking I did before the compo.

I went in with the idea that I would do a top-down game with some sort of combat, and I would design the mechanics around the theme.  But “Beneath the Surface” has a few contradictions with a top-down perspective.

My first-five-minutes idea was this:  There are tiles/cards on the battlefield, and you can flip them to find out what’s beneath.

That’s it!  I even drew a little man, who accidentally turned out to be a cowboy.  So a cowboy was flipping cards that did something, to help him do something.

I was not pleased, because I like to have a physical mechanic at the core of the game.  Inspiration was not striking.

I opened a blank notepad and just dumped a slew of ideas into it, mostly trash.

But then I struck on one.  The moon of Jupiter, Europa, has water and is thought to potentially support life in our solar system.

So here’s the deal:  Europa has melted, and you are there in a spacecraft that can fly in the air and in the water.  The trick is that while you’re in the air, you are being dragged down by gravity.  When you are in the water, you are being pushed up by buoyancy.

You have a limited amount of thrust that barely competes with these forces when you oppose them, but you can influence the bobbing wave path that results from the alternating forces.

You’ll have to ride this wave, using your jets to adjust your path, avoiding obstacles and probably doing the obvious thing of shooting guns at hostile aliens.

After a horrifying 20 minutes where I forgot to turn off the “Apply Root Motion” option of the Unity 2D animator (what an insane default to turn on, it WRECKS your physics completely!), I have implemented the bobbing ship.

Next task is to implement some form of level generator with icebergs you must avoid.  Then I’ll have enough to see if the fun is actually fun.

This is what i got from the 5 first hours of work ! Some rest now before going back in a few hours

Made some great progress tonight. Got all the core interactions working. Still lots to do, but I think this might turn out to be a playable thing by Sunday night.

Hooray!

I was at work while the competition started and just got home and ate, so I’m doing my here’s-the-old-code-I’m-using post now.

It’s your basic update-loop function, and collision-detection, and animation, and… stuff. Anyone who’s using a system like Unity or a nice code-library actually has a lot more going on than I do, but I just like the idea of using my own code. But actually, I’m not actually sure I’m using all of this; for example, I plan on using balls instead of squares for the entities in this game, so Hitbound.js won’t be what I use. Or at least, it won’t be ALL I use.

I liked the Control More Than One concept, so I’ll be using that somehow. I was also a huge fan of that one game, Desert Worm or Death Worm or whatever it was called. I’d like to put a twist on it, though… I’ll see what I can come up with.

Since my idea revolved around being underground and using natural light for guidance, I needed to create a decent lighting engine. So here is what the game looks like so far, without shadows (yet!):

I’m using OpenGL + GLSL in Java, via LWJGL. And I’m streaming here: twitch.tv/TheCherno

I’m entering Ludum Dare 29. I have an idea for a game, I don’t know if I can make it work though.

Tools and stuff I’ll be using:
> FlashDevelop
> Flashpunk
> Tiled
> GraphicsGale, GIMP
> bxfr
> goldwave
> Musagi, pxTone or cgMusic

 
This is some base code I’ll be starting with.
Download

Tags: as3, flash, flashpunk

It`s 10:01 in Saint-Petersburg, so good morning ludum darists (or whatever time of the day you need).
Glad to see an interesting theme – that`s the best new for this time.
I`ve missed previous LD, but still want to have the same fun i had while LD26 and 27.

I`m packed with Construct2 and Photoshop, quite enough for me to make a good game.

Good luck and good ideas to everyone. Lets do it! (or “keep doing!”)

Tags: ld29, yozzik

I’ve got the asset creation pipeline down, and I’ve upgraded to the 30-day trial of Unity Pro in order to use pretty effects.  It’s a game about elephants.  Or more accurately, it’s a game about everything that isn’t the elephant.

Pretty obvious concept, but it should be fun and maybe a little challenging.  It’s going to be challenging to make, at any rate.  I’ve never done organic 3D modeling before.

Out of all my ludum dares, This game has actually made myself motivated 😀

Gotta fix that generation ore thingy XD

Just (essentially) finished the main character. A futuristic android.

Will disclose more eventually when I have it finalised.

O

Order of animations are Idle>Run>Jump>Fly>Fall

Done in Photoshop and Spriter.

I’m open to answer questions/or whatever. Good way to give me small mini-breaks in between dev’ing.

Working on another LD, more sober and less abstract than last year

Hold a seat, I’ll brb.

Since the game will be a VN, I had to be able to script scenes someway (and it had to be easy to use). So, this is what I implemented today:

addChar(Character, “hero”, 0, 0, false, FlxObject.RIGHT);
addChar(Character, “maoou”, 0, 0, false, FlxObject.LEFT);
addMoveCharTo(“hero”, 10, 0, 2);
addGotoLabel(“LBL02”);
addPutLabel(“LBL01”);
addShowOptions(“hero”, [“red”, “white”], [“LBL03”, “LBL04”]);
addPutLabel(“LBL04”);
addCallFunction(“teste”, function():void { FlxG.flash(); } );
addGotoLabel(“END”);
addPutLabel(“LBL02”);
addCallFunction(“teste”, function():void { FlxG.flash(0xffff0000); } );
addMoveCharTo(“hero”, 0, 0, 2);
addGotoLabelIf(“LBL01”, function():Boolean { return true; } );
addCallFunction(“teste”, function():void { FlxG.flash(); } );
addPutLabel(“LBL03”);
addCallFunction(“teste”, function():void { FlxG.flash(0xffff0000); } );
addPutLabel(“END”);

Isn’t it cute? XD

I still have to implement the function to display messages, but knowing that I can already change the flow of the scene (and also by user) puts me at ease.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day… \o/

I am back from my trip to the store and I picked up the essentials. Milk, cocopops and pepsi.

On the walk back I made some decisions about my game. I am dropping pad support in favour of a cannon fodder style point and click movement/action. I think this will suit the game better. It is also daylight now in the UK so once I implement this control change, I will take a rest I think.

here is proof of daylight and open curtains… (Well one of them)

At first I was let down with “beneath the surface” but then I thought about new ways to interpret it and it melded with a half idea I’ve had in the back of my brain for a while. If I achieve all I want this game could be good… but it’s going to take some doing. The order of things to do:

Get engine/code done
Find Art/Sound assets (I’m doing the 72h)
Add more levels/Title
Smooth out all rough edges
Sleep

So wish me luck, tonight’s goal is just to have a rough version of the engine (without the major mechanic yet).

I’m using Unity, I learned last time LD is not a good time to try out a new development setup for the first time.

As promised, first screenshot. Holes everywhere!

Holes on beach.

I thought the theme might be “break the rule”, since it was the hottest during the first round of voting. I was going to break the rule by making something that did not follow the theme. :D, anyone thought of the same thing ?

I will probably not be doing it this time round, since I will not be free to do anything today.

If I have time tomorrow, I might make something short =).

All the best to all who are still participating =). Good luck 😀

Ok. Hope you’re all doing ok. Here’s a screenshot:

Playlist:

MORE CONVERGE!!!!!

And that will be my graphics/input library of choice:asciiLib
The game itself will be a crazy mix between Rogue and a few others I don’t tell you (at this moment). My primary goals will be:

• Easy to understand – Maybe I’m simply stupid, but I never really understood the original Rogue mechanics, my game will provide you with easy-to-access helpful tutorials and pieces of advice on how to play this game
• Skill-based gameplay – What I understood and what happens you in other games (like Pokemon / Final Fantasy) is that at some level in the fights, it isn’t you who is fighting, it is the computer fighting with itself, while the luck (or the random number generator) decides who will win. I’ll put up a fight system in which you can decide which one is going to win (meaning either you are good enough to beat your enemy or you are not).

I wish you good luck and fun times making your game!

Helco

It’s one in the morning here and I’m just starting.

I’ve decided on a horror/stealth game in ImpactJS that takes place on the ocean floor. Your undersea research station is under attack by… some indescribable horror from under the sea floor… and you’ve narrowly escaped in a slow-moving deep sea crawler with no working visuals of what’s going on outside. All you have is sonar which will wake the beast if you’re not careful.

Forgot to make an I’m in post at the start.

We(C-Average Studios) are about 5 hours in, currently we’ve got a base engine going. SpriteSheet loading, level and entity systems, state engine, tiles, all that good stuff.

Currently working on making Sprite animations and implementing some sort of animation code to the engine.

Working from completely scratch in java using just the standard JRE. I’ll probably post some pictures once we get our animation stuff going. Our idea is really hard to explain, I can’t even think of a game to compare it to, but hopefully it works out well.

Oh by the way, we’re a team of three.

I(Clepto) am the programmer.

Ben(Misterorjoe) is the animation creator/mathmatician

Jack(jackc413) is doing all of graphics and sprite design.

I found this online text-to-voice app here: http://www.ivona.com/us/

I wanted some narration for my game, but I’m am not sounding the best at the moment (sore throat) so I was wondering if using this was against the rules in any way.

Thanks for your help, and good luck!

I’ve gotten started on my first Ludum Dare entry (I’m entering the jam to take things easy).

So far just some programmer art and some base coding to walk down an infinite hallway. Hopefully I’ll be able to get more mechanics in tomorrow once I sleep on a few ideas.

I’m working in Unity, using C# for coding. Art is being done in Paint.net and GraphicsGale. I’ll likely end up using Bfxr to generate sound effects and autotracker and/or www.abundant-music.com to generate music.

It looks like an actual game now.

Going fairly well so far. I hope everyone is going good, this theme is hard and kind of limited though.

This is actually my first Ludum Dare and I hope I get some good feedback.

BTW, I forgot to do an “I’m in” post so, this is kind of it, I’m in.

-lucienpro

Hey there everyone. Going to give a quick development update on what’s going on. So I have the idea for my game down, the basic work done and pre-production completed. I have all the design work done and I’ve set up the basics on the programming side of things. No real problems so far, but I’m extremely tired, and so I’m going to go take a short nap.

The game’s called The Great Chamber, and you play an unnamed hero exploring a dungeon collecting Artifacts of Old to ultimately unlock the final chamber that holds a secret.

Each Artifact is guarded by a unique boss that you must defeat.

Wow, I’m so damned tired, can barely type now. I’ll update again later. Continue with the hard work everyone!

Ready to Rock!

Woke up, theme, shower, breakFAST, music playlist… Go!

Quite fitting for the theme!

Credit: http://sarmati.deviantart.com/art/Truth-lies-just-beneath-the-surface-444958717

Tags: art

I’m in, but very unlikely to finish anything for either compo or jam with family commitments this weekend.

Like the theme and my son has popped a couple really cool ideas out this morning.

Lets see what can be done.

Platform: XNA/Monogame but would like to try something with a wider reach.

Gfx: Paint.Net

All hero have a inspiration.

We have Link, the cat.

Tags: catphoto

Hello everyone, I am going to make a game using:

Stencyl

Inkscape

Gimp

And I am participating in jam because friends are helping

Basically, we are trying to make a ship customization system, where a player starts out with a basic ship for drilling (They won’t be ships, but drillers, but I made a ship because I am stupid. Here is the player’s original ship (NC-3).

So I struggled for a little bit coming up with ideas, but I guess that’s almost how all ludum dares start, but eventually I think I came up with a pretty good one. Originally what I was thinking about was motherload, but I figured that would be pretty generic and kind of done, but I went and played the game for a few minutes to try and determine what I liked about it. I decided that I liked collecting ores and saving up to upgrade my ship the most. I fell back on some things I’ve learned about game design from this rather lengthy post http://mm.soldat.pl/development-log/triple-a-the-story-of-kag-and-link-dead it talks about the atoms of a game “the core elements” as it were. You should at most 3 core elements I decided my core elements were mining/collecting (you need to mine to collect), movement (you need to move your character around the world), upgrading (upgrade the stats of your player, speed, storage fighting.) I tried to think of a few games based around these “atoms”, but finally I settled on one game idea that I rather liked. It seemed like if I finished it, it would be a fun, fast passed game with collecting and upgrading. 😛

The basic idea is that you start at a space station (in the middle of the world) the vast emptiness of space is filled with mineral rich asteroids. You as a miner for the space station must shuttle to the various asteroids and bust them to smithereens and collect the resources. However some asteroids may hold dangers like exploding, monsters, exploding monsters, secret pirate bases. As a mining vessel you can’t really defend yourself against these dangerous so you must fly back to the space station and have it defend you with it’s powerful cannons. At the space station you can also upgrade your ship and buy items. Upgrades: Ship speed, Mining speed, Cargo storage, Fuel. Items: defense drone, teleporter, extra fuel, shield, bomb. The goal of the game is simple stay alive as long as possible, and collect as many resources as possible. In order to stay alive you must refuel at the space station and evade pirates and raiders who want the space stations minerals.

Here is my mock up of the mining ship.

For now I haven’t done to much gameplay I’ve just been putting together the engine, it’s almost finished though. So I’m feeling pretty confident and optimistic at this point, although I’m sure that will change soon. (I might have change to doing the Jam, because I may have a large chunk of time taken out of my next couple of days.)

Hey there! Greetings from Bergamo, Italy! I’m working on the concept right now, as I woke up an hour ago. Didn’t want to wake up earlier and be sleeeeeeepy all day. 😉

By the way, I’ll be streaming here: http://it.twitch.tv/catman87

I’m still at the concept phase, so there is not much to do (but a single, ugly sprite). That will change later, however!

Have a good jam!!!

Getting a Ship editor up in here! For my ludum dare project Walter The White Cell.

Hello, this is my 3rd ludum dare.

Im entering the compo, could turn into the jam.

I have the flu, and  i am attempting to make a text adventure, lets see how it goes.

Im using.

twine

pencil & paper

Yeah, I guess I’ll try to make something for the Jam. I already have some kind of concept in my head, I’ll just need to get it on paper and then on the screen. I’ll be doing everything in plain java, no libraries or frameworks or engines. For graphics I’ll use Grafx2 and Gimp2, for sounds bfxr and maybe sunvox if I happen to need music

I hope I find enough time and motivation to finish this one, but without any further ado, I wish good luck to everyone else taking part in the Jam and Compo! Have a fun Ludum Dare!!

6 hours has past… I achieve beat the first wall: the theme wall.

The game will be a Metroid-like which you have control of the game and a console at the same time. In order to progress you have to get more “abilities” in game and exploit it in console… Or something like that (I need test a lot!).
I think that my idea is cool, but hard to code and design… Whatever, LudumDare is a right place to experiment!!

I go to rest a few hours, and back direct to the coding (the really hard stuff in this jam)…

Not panicking yet. yet. YET

The cyborg in there now is just a placeholder. I’ll replace her with someone else eventually.

Trying a different approach than I normally do. I’m just gonna make random mechanics that are sorta fun with no real idea what it will look like. I still have no idea what the premise is going to be, so might be too early for characters. I’m thinking something with sewers or dungeons. Game will be some kind of multiplayer “grab coins, don’t die” thing. I dunno n things.

Here’s a playable demo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/51k88di2yxdzt66/LudumDare29.swf You should be able to drag the .swf directly into a browser to play it. Use WSD and space to move n jump.

Tags: Carl Graves, Demos, flash, ld29

but when I do , it sucks! Finished the animations for the generic dude and girl. I’m using Pickle Editor and if anyone knows HOW to resize the images inside the editor please do tell me.

EDIT: For some reason the images dosen’t animate, click on them to watch the super duper awesome animation!

Well, I think I may actually participate in a Ludum Dare for once. I’ve been playing around with Unity lately, and I think a 2D side-scrolling puzzler wouldn’t be too bad to start with. I’d like to utilize a built-in power up system in the form of “Avatars.” Basically, the player can switch between various characters, things like a little girl, an artist, a doctor, or a lumberjack, but each has their “inner self” thats beneath the surface. Things like the little girl secretly being a monster, and so upon activation she can deal lots of damage, or scare enemies away, that sort of thing.

Im just wondering if this might be too ambitious. The idea really grips me, and seems like a fun twist on the classic side-scrolling puzzler, similar to something like Braid or Nihilumbra but I just hope I can actually deliver on it.

EDIT: Please feel free to leave comments. I’d love to hear what ya’ll think.

… an explorer ship!

The theme is “Beneath the Surface”. I have yet to come up with a solid idea… :/ No matter however, I have been very busy. I have created a font (its missing a lot of characters, but considering how bad i am at graphics..) and (using my game engine of course) a tile and tiled level system. I know your probably thinking: why would that take a long time? I have a (fancy) XML system of defining tiles and (to be implemented) levels. I also got collisions working. Screenie:

For the curious, the XML tile thingy:

<tile>
 <name>Stone</name>
 <texture>Stone.png</texture>
 <class>com.sci.ld29.level.CollidableTile</class> <!-- class is optional, Tile is default -->
 </tile>

and

<tile>
 <name>Portal</name>
 <animation frameTimeMS="50">
 <texture>Portal_1.png</texture>
 <texture>Portal_2.png</texture>
 <texture>Portal_3.png</texture>
 <texture>Portal_4.png</texture>
 <texture>Portal_5.png</texture>
 </animation>
 </tile>

Read Devlog #2 here.

After waking up at 8:30 and working on the game until 12:30, then having lunch until now, im gonna make my first post.

Sweet logo, eh?

Using Unity3D, i’m making a game about the ocean. I’m sure i am not the only one.

The goal of the game is to drive a submarine, sorry, a yellow submarine around and collect stuff. Not sure what yet. Probably fish or something.

Just as in my first LD, i am focusing on design first, and gameplay later, which probably isn’t the very brightest thing to do, but it seems natural to me.

Here is a gif of the submarine. This shot is a bit zoomed in and the sub seems a bit too round for the style i am going for, i will probably have to adjust that.

The waves are generated through the most magical of gamedev-tools: Perlin-Noise.

So far so good. Definitely pleased with what i have done in the 3 hours so far.

For once I actually have *too many* ideas than none. I’m having trouble picking :S

“Leonid, you can’t go! Abandon this foolish quest.”

“I’m sorry sis, this is something I have to do — for science!”

(From Leo Geo and his Miraculous Journey through the Center of the Earth.)

Final draft of idea done! Severely sleep deprived. Let’s start coding! #LD48 #LD29 #SHLD48 streaming at http://twitch.tv/jesosk

I see everyone making posts, so I guess I will too! This is my first ludum dare. The first day is closing up and I don’t have much yet, but I’m super excited for the next few days :]!

I’m certainly in. For the first time, after I saw theme, I know what I want to do, so better I dont waste any second.

Lang: C#

Framework: Unity

GFX: Photoshop

SFX: This time, i’ll improvise.

Added a boat that drops balls that kills you and a game over screen(that I spent way to much time on making). Don’t really know how to make it an actual game but I’ll just keep adding stuff and see how it turns out(worked last time), of course I forgot to add sharks before I started on the ship and game over screen so sharks will probably be a little late.

It’s been a few hours since the theme was released and I finally get to start the game.

I spent this whole time preparing the project setup and tools.

First, I had to decide  which IDE to use. I tried Eclipse, Aptana, Sublime and after getting repeatedly slapped in the face, decided for good and old Emacs.

Isn’t it beautiful?

That’s right – turns out it works just fine for this small project. Now, to the tools!

I’m using melonJS to make a small HTML5 2D platformer. I spent some time converting an old test project to the latest melonJS-1.0.0 version. The API changed a lot so it was tough to adapt.

Anyway, it’s 4AM here (GMT-3) so I shall go to bed. When I return, I’ll focus on making a nice codebase and then worry about sticking to the theme (art and music).

You can follow the progress on my github repository: https://github.com/alexdantas/ludum-dare-29

Tags: html5, MelonJS

We ran through a few ideas, like X-ray glasses, an ant hill, a game where you have to glue down manhole covers to keep a monster from escaping the sewer, what we’re rolling with now is: What is 90% below the surface? An iceberg.

Definitely a good start, eh?

Tags: jam, progress

Hi! I’m looking forward to joining LD this weekend.

I’ll be using a framework for multiplayer games I’ve created (http://github.com/mortie/multipleb). As that suggests, I’ll be making a multiplayer game,  using node.js on the server, and javascript on the client.

Got a good start tonight and completed a lot of art. Tomorrow these guys will be swimming…..beneath the surface.

Tags: spermaceti gang

making a hunting game where you stalk a subterranean creature that lives in an island of flesh. you have to chase it down (it’ll move around), stun it, trap it with your hands, and then squeeze it out onto the surface. then you’ll wrestle it into the void.

made the player character today.

VINE

Still a lot of game left to build, though. Honestly, I’m a little worried about tomorrow, but I’ll try and power through it.

Tags: First Ludum dare

My one and only goal this Ludum Dare.
Avoid making a game involving caves. 😛

all the speech will be in limericks for some reason, what have I done?

yellow river, surface and diving submarine…

I’ll be back in ~10 hours.

I was hoping that “Beneath the Surface” theme would be selected and what do you know – it made it! Too bad I won’t probably have time during the weekend to scrape up a game of any sorts. Oh well I like the theme so much that I should create perhaps a 1GAM out of it…

I had this idea of a modernised text adventure, with some graphics on the background and sounds & music to create atmosphere, non-static text that could appear in different parts of the screen, maybe even some real-time sequences. Seems that like most people here, my initial feeling of the theme leads underground, although ‘surface’ could really mean anything and going beneath the surface is simply passing a threshold.

Good luck everyone! I hope that really great games come out of this LD. If you have never finished a game (in Ludum Dare or otherwise), now is a perfectly good time to do it! That’s all that counts, after all!

Well I’m uploading a video first, but I will be going to bed soon. People say L.D. is the place to experiment, and I definitely feel like I am here. Usually I focus on gameplay, but I’m focusing more on atmosphere this time — maybe it’s due to all my recent Oculus work. Regardless, I hope once I start putting in better textures, audio, and actual gameplay elements, it will start to take shape. So far I think it’s just going to be a simple “puzzle” object solving game but with a very dark theme…or maybe not…

Video Link!

My status so far with creating my game called ‘Gold Digger’
I’m just creating on the go and i’ll see how far I will come.

I have imo low skill in art but I do like to code, I’m not looking to win this LD
But to only learn from it and keep from a developers-block while learning intresting stuff.

 Good luck with everyone’s entry

First screenshot for jam.  Although I am working alone, I have an existing codebase.  So it’s kinda not fair.  Still, it gets me off my butt to work on it.

You are looking up a spiraling tower where you will encounter roboskulls.  Now to make the roboskulls…

When complete, you will begin underwater and emerge from the surface up into the tower.

got 99% of my assets done, and installed in my basic load crap up script

but yea its been a crazy 50 hour work week, along with bad sleep every single night…

im done for now, catch ya in the morning

Looking scary yet?

Streaming at twitch.tv/TheCherno

Hey there. We are here live at Sonys ludum dare-meet up.

We are using Unity2D with a very shitty tile editor we wrote. You can find it here.

We are also using the standard misc tools.

Paint.net

FL Studio

Visual Studio

BFXR

Have fun!

Finished our first animation for an enemy. Just a simple walking animation. We’re using Synfig Studio for the animations. Creating the original sprites and limbs in Paint.NET, then creating the animations using bone rigging in Synfig.

I’ve also finished the animation framework in the engine. Just a simple thing to run through a series of sprites in a given time. Speed is automatically calculated based on the number of frames with the amount of time and the game’s overall delta time.

Arms for the creatures are not in the sheet because they are going to be rendered separately so that they can be freely rotated based on where the creature is looking or pointing to(most likely towards the player).

At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the idea I was going along with, but so far so good.  Animation looks a bit wonky yet, but I think it’s half-decent for my lack of animation skills.  For now, time to get some sleep!